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The Female World from a Global Perspective

1988; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2069379

1939-8638

Elise Boulding, Jessie Bernard,

Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics

Jessie Bernard's book, The Female World from a Global Perspective, is an eclectic blend of sociology and politics, presented on a number of different levels which sometimes comfortably intertwine, sometimes not. It presents a theoretical position on women as part of a separate world. It contains as well a series of arguments and illustrative cases on advantages (or otherwise) or separatist versus integrationist policies. This is not same as first level; one can argue that women should have chance to develop themselves in a separate group where appropriate, given fact of male dominance in many parts of our society, without accepting Bernard's position that world is separate from that of men. The book is also an overview of political events, UN strategies for development, feminist movement and its effects throughout world, andof major international women's meetings and their consequences. Finally, it is a series of illustrative, although disparate, case studies which serve to highlight author's own theoretical position. That author is genuinely concerned with future of women is always obvious: what are best strategies for development; what place should women's issues hold in overall scheme of things; can we have equitable integration without being co-opted into a male world; must separation lead to marginalization of women's issues? These questions straddle entire book, as author not only gives us a perspective on world but attempts to map out a paradigm which might provide some answers. A widely-travelled writer, Bernard draws on her experiences to illustrate questions she advances and possible solutions. She has moved between Washington intellectual salons and international women's meetings, from Calcutta and Beijing to US develop ment offices. The book, she tells us, is a view of 2.5 billion females on this planet at a precise moment of time in a rapidly changing world. Bernard argues that her own perspective is slanted in direction of world as an entity in its own right, with an intrinsic logic of its own. All over world women and have lived together, produced children, may have cared for each other on a personal level; nevertheless, all over that same world, on a political level, four times more than male children are malnourished; two-thirds of illiterates of world are females, female-headed households are creating a new class of poor worldwide. Separation and integration are already part of female-male relationship, just as major political and economic issues are re-enacted in everyday lives of people. This dualism is reflected in domination and subordination, in false dichotomy between public and private issues. One could argue that these issues cannot be tackled on a one-dimensional level, that neither class nor gender alone can adequately serve in formation of a paradigm. Despite material base of class, Bernard chooses to concentrate on gender as major explanatory variable, resulting, she says, in existence of two separate worlds. It is, of course, true that women have many common life experiences bearing and rearing children, and that a biological fact has broad social implications. But just as obviously, women with have played a huge part in production process. Besides, as she tells us, women in many parts of world are now spending less and less time on child-rearing and much more in labour force. She acknowledges fact that differences among females in life expectancy, childbearing, child care and household size reflect enormous disparities in world in which they live but whatever nature of life course in world may be, women everywhere are not only shaped by it to contribute their part to pattern but they are also shaped to find it tolerable. Thus, there is at same time a view of women as a separate, dynamic body, and a few moments later, a frustrating assumption of women as a passive entity, moulded by a male world. She talks of different spaces and women occupy, for example, in Ghana in soccer stadiums and bars, women in Church activities. I found myself vividly recalling pictures in Pat Mahoney's book Schools for Boys -ofboys straddling fences, hanging from tree limbs, spread across road, and of girls tucked away in corners. One can empathize when Bernard says how isolated from one another two worlds may be. Yet she goes further and tells us that even when and women are working side by side, they still inhabit separate worlds, that female and male children sitting side by side in a school room are not attending same school. While we do know that different patterns of interaction between teachers and children may result in different outcomes for girls and boys, can we ignore interaction between two and conclude, as Bernard does, that the genderised girl graduates in separate adult world? Bernard herself, in another part of her book, writes against this passive, stagnant view of women as victims of a socialization process over which they have nocontrol. The women who are actors in her many illustrative cases are not pawns of extrinsic forces but women who are very definitely taking control and expanding their niches. She argues that work women do throughout world is different from work that do. Women tend to care for children, for household. But does this mean that men and women live not only in separate psychological and social worlds but also in spatially different worlds? In large factories of China, Korea and Taiwan do women and occupy different spaces? In Africa, where women produce 70% of food and do 75% of agricultural work, do and women occupy different spaces? Is her I theory only applicable in certain rural areas? The book provides us with no I answers to these questions and cases 1 presented serve only to highlight separateness for which she argues. She tells us that infants born in low-income economies have life-expectancies only two-thirds as long as infant girls born in richer economies. Yet this statistic involves two variables, gender and wealth, or resources. Likewise, within a country in western world, we know that low income families have similarly poor health statistics as ones she quotes for females from a global per-